History Of Introduced Fruits Into America – Native American Fruit Trees And Hybrid Fruit Tree Improvements

Author: Pat Malcolm

Christopher Columbus in 1493 introduced citrus trees into America on the Island of Haiti, by planting the seed of the sweet orange tree, the sour orange, citron, lemon, lime, and pummelo fruit trees. Records show that citrus trees were well established by the Spanish in coastal South Carolina and Saint Augustine, Florida by the year 1563.

Historical English documents show that the Massachusetts Company in 1629 sent seeds of pear trees to plant and grow into fruit trees at the American colony located at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Captain John Smith reported in 1629 that seed-grown peach trees were growing in the American colony at Jamestown, Virginia. Apple trees were grown at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1629 by William Blackstone, an American colonist, and this practice of planting fruit trees rapidly spread among many other farmers there.

Other fruit tree seeds that were sent for colonist farmers to plant and grow were: cherry, peach, plum, filbert, apple, quince, and pomegranate, and according to documents, “they sprung up and flourished.”

In 1707 historical Spanish mission documents show that fruit trees being grown by the Spanish-Americans were: oranges, fig trees, quince, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, apples, pear trees, mulberries, pecans and other trees.

General Oglethorpe, the first governor of the colony of Georgia, settled at Fort Frederica, located at Saint Simons Island, Georgia, in 1733, the same date that the city of Savannah, Georgia was founded, with the appointed purpose of introducing fruit trees that would grow valuable food sources for the Georgia farmers. John Bartram, the famous explorer and father of William Bartram traveled extensively, after the Spanish abandoned their lands, to take an inventory of plants, trees, and vines that might be useful to farmers in the American colonies.

General Oglethorpe imported 500 white mulberry trees, Morus alba, in 1733 to encourage and economically support the developing colonial interests in silk production at Fort Frederica, Georgia, colony of the English on the island of Saint Simons, Georgia.

Henry Laurens, a President of the American Continental Congress from South Carolina, introduced: olives, limes, everbearing strawberry, and red raspberry for culture in the colonies and from the south of France, he imported and introduced apples, pears, plums, and the white Chasselas grape which bore abundantly.

In 1763, George Mason recorded in his extensive fruit journal of his home orchard that he had planted an old French variety of pear tree, and he “grafted 10 black pear of Worchester.”

The Black Mission fig tree was made famous when it was found growing at a Spanish monastery in 1770.